Destroyer
by Blue-Inked Frost
Summary: Khalid has a Harper's adventure before the events of the game, and unknowing meets a future enemy.
1. Chapter 1

_Summary_: Khalid has a Harper's adventure before the events of the game, and unknowing meets a future enemy.

_Notes_: This story uses a form of racebending (dark-agenda. dreamwidth 7371. html) to reinterpret a character's origins. I can't see why characters should have to stick to just one backstory when there are so many possibilities. ;)

—

"_A few tendays, Khalid; a few months at most. Perhaps it will be best. We chose the duties of Harpers. Nature heals all in time..._"

He polished the stone on a corner of his billowing sleeves. By a fountain, by the waters of a garden in the city's wealthy quarters, by ripe plant growth; the stone was smooth, and streaked with mossy green in complicated natural patterns, a hundred different shades of brown twining across the shape of a small egg. Of such she saw the most beauty. He dropped the simple stone deep into the pouch and straightened, with one last look at the still haven in the midst of a giant thronged city. Khalid travelled on.

The Durparan bazaar was bright with afternoon sun. He smelt smoke, dye, tumeric, cows, mules, cooked lamb, sweat, peppers. He heard bartering and names and phrases in the tongues he knew and words mysterious to him in tongues he did not; Durpar was a land of many peoples and many gifted in speech. The people were mostly humans, a few halflings, one or two with elven blood like his own, some dark and some fair in hair and complexion. A small black-haired girl dressed in a bright red pheran had her hand grasped by a blue-clad woman with golden bracelets clinking upon both of her wrists, a large pottery bowl tucked under her other arm. He looked at others in the markets.

He could remember his wife's face only as if hidden behind a rippling stream of water, brushing over the lines of her features and blurring her from sight. When they saw each other once more all would clear. All must clear; he would be a husband more worthy of her, able to find the words ringing from his throat to say the right things at last.

There were many gifted in speech here, he thought wryly again. Crowds were well with him as long as he could tell himself none paid attention to him within them; the joy of many people was what he fought for as a Harper. Still he preferred to go unseen, and with Jaheira by his side visiting her stony glare upon an unnatural city and all of its works, drawing eyes away from him... He did not look native-born to this land, but he wore a hood to shade himself above the undyed kurta tunic and plain churidar breeches of a working man. He came armed with his longsword across his back, in part disguised in a scabbard he had purchased at such a bazaar, and a leather surcoat rolled in the bundle he carried.

"_Khalid, have a care when you fight; I have blessed this material by prayer to Silvanus._"

The colours of the open street were bright, reds and blues and golds and dazzling whites in the buildings, and the hangings of market stalls were thick with lavish embroidery and art. Srinavath was a prosperous city by the Golden River, where the King kept a rich palace and maintained vaziers and priests and scholars to advise him. But the King was old; and so the Harpers and others sought a favourable transfer of power. Khalid remembered the briefings given him; remembered his first travel through Durpar, being tutored in the principal tongues of it with Jaheira. He stuttered but his memory was quick to grasp new languages.

_Ask at the second potter's stall with the grey labyrinth symbol for Master Yashke; and he will tell you of our headquarters..._

Khalid stared up at the brilliant banners flying by the King's gold-tiled roof of the palace, the pure white domes of the temple to the Auspicious Judge rising into the sky. Soldiers in polished armour stood against gates to oversee the markets, glinting brightly and attentively. It was a time of unrest, for Jayadevii the eldest princess and Lalla the middle son and the young reckless Pravarsena all sought the throne; and sought other powers as well.

_Off on the street of the Yellow Aubergine, friend; knock four times and ask for Sharadaa Silversword._ The pots were finely made and Khalid considered a small oil jar carved with lines of a leaf design that seemed almost to flutter in the still air; but it would do no good to be heavy laden so early in his journey. He thought of the stone with a dry smile as he replaced the man-crafted jar. His sandalled feet were so dusty as to shame him here.

_'Tis a shame sometimes that we Harpers make so much mystery of our dealings; but yet it keeps us safe._

Perhaps the potter had given imperfect directions; perhaps he led himself on a detour. The street he walked through was darker than he had expected, though a cool welcome change from heavy sunlight. The clay houses were painted in peeling paint, the stones under his feet worn, and for a street so close to the markets it was oddly derelict. Laundry was hung out of doors and the angles of the walls seemed to lean over him. The temple still rose above and Khalid took it for a guide to his navigation. An old man sat on the ground with a begging bowl in front of him, drums and pots strapped to his body; Khalid stooped to place down one of the silver coins of the region. There were sounds ahead as of playing children. The games were the same near everywhere, chasing and throwing and running and playing with sticks and wooden swords...

_Such a baby and a crybaby, more eunuch than son—!_

Then a pitiful cry sounded in the air as if someone was harmed. Khalid stepped swiftly around a dirty corner. He saw a group of urchins, ill-clad at best, none like his elder brothers and his father; a smaller figure in their middle in green, weeping bitterly.

The children's calls came in a dialect of Dehlavi he didn't know well. Witch-child, coward, Khalid thought he heard in the high-pitched jeering. Then one of the older children grabbed at the long dirtied sleeve of the boy's large overtunic and whipped around the child to land in the streets. The child's head landed near an ankle; and then he bit and the older boy shrieked.

"Witch—" A booted foot struck toward the small figure in the centre of them, and Khalid went further into the narrow street. He shook back his hood; raised a fist; and the children scattered for a few words from him. He saw the young victim left behind, spitting out blood and weeping from fear and pain, curled around himself.

"They have gone. You are safe now," Khalid said carefully, using the trade dialect of Dehlavi he knew the best. The child's chin bled; the palms of his hands were black and bloodied from scraping along the ground. Khalid drew his handkerchief, wet it with the contents of a potion in his belt, and began treating the simple wounds.

The boy opened flashing green eyes and spoke a tide of Skrtavak: the tongue of the educated. And foolish though it was Khalid drew back for a moment—

"There are fires between the teeth and a mouth that draws insects to fly into it," the boy's high-pitched voice said. "They burn in their own destruction as he licks his flaming lips and dreadful teeth and many stomachs and his wide white ivory tusks sharp as steel and strong as flood!"

The words were utterly wrong for a child; then Khalid recognised it as only a recitation. _I am a fool._

"I will clean you up," he answered haltingly in the same tongue; it must be shocking to have bullies and then a stranger taunt in unfamiliar words. "You are lucky you are not b-badly hurt. You must be far from your family. Where do you live?"

By clothes and speech he could not be a street child; he had more than the tall urchins who had tormented him. The boy was light-haired and light-brown-skinned in the way of the valleyfolk of Durpar, a common enough sight in Srinavath. A black seal as a small dot was tattooed between his eyebrows, a sign of the Durparan gods. He was human and could scarcely be above six years of age. He watched Khalid and cried out again when the potion gave a first shock:

"It will help you, little one," Khalid said, talking even if it were meaningless babble. "Only the first of it hurts and only a little. My wife...my wife could heal you in an instant were she here, but this is fine. I will make sure you safely return home. There, perhaps now you can stand."

The child shook his head, his gaze now cloudy and unclear. He thrust half of a cleaned fist into his mouth and did not get up.

"Could you tell me your name? Your mother and your father? Your home?" Khalid said. The boy's green clothing had red and yellow decorations stitched to it, forming shapes; but none Khalid recognised as lettering or sigils. The child said nothing and could not stand. He shook his head as if it had all exhausted him.

_I will be brought to the guards for kidnapping!_

Khalid hoisted the human boy over his shoulder, speaking gently to him as he could. For all the child's recent experience he relaxed limply as if he gave complete trust to the arms holding him, and rested his curly head against Khalid's neck. A line of drool ran down Khalid's back; and his unexpected passenger had closed his eyes to fall immediately asleep.

"I b-bow to your soul," Khalid said, the greeting here, "I seek Sharadaa Silversword."

The Harper cell was clean-bricked in a pale yellow stone, for the most part opened at the ceiling to allow air and light and the fragrances of a garden set above between the wide windows. There were few decorations or ornaments to it, all bare-walled and functional in furniture; Khalid saw a human woman in knee-length pheran and loose salwar trousers below it, wearing a curved sword at her waist, her face half hidden by jewellery in the shape of a mask covering left cheek to forehead. A halfling woman sat by her side, a short sword sheathed at her side and the signs of throwing daggers carried in her clothing; and a human man well-dressed in gold rings on his fingers and a feathered turban.

"The child is... He was lost in the streets and I thought you should be able to help," Khalid said. He sat down carefully; the boy slept on, a warm weight across him.

"Well, Khalid of Belgrade's cell, you believe the Harpers are nursemaids?" Sharadaa said. "Give him to a guard; or return him to where you found him; I care not. None but Harpers should tread on this ground."

"If the Harpers are not nursemaids when the circumstances call for it, then we should do n-nothing at all," Khalid replied. He should not be angry; he should not enter into a first meeting from a position like this; he should respect his fellows in the Harper order. "'Tis s-shameful to...to sit and allow!"

Sharadaa stared at him with her uncovered eye. "If you cannot understand simple priority then it is you who lack balance," she said. _Balance—as Jaheira would—_ Khalid cursed his quarrelling tongue. She had raised her voice and the boy stirred in his sleep. She lowered it again. "I daresay an urchin shall not be listened to; and Subhash may take memory from him. Listen before he starts to wail or worse."

"Wonder what Jaheira Harper'd say that ten minutes after walking in town her Khalid comes to the Harper hold with a child pressed on him?" the halfling, Flores, said, a poor jest. Sharadaa gestured her to silence.

"Jayadevii is a foolish tyrant who would return her people to utter isolation—and like as not be overturned herself in short time. Pravarsena is reckless but has a gift to influence men and some sympathy for just cause. But Prince Lalla is our enemy: our reports show already that he would agree to trade with Zhentarim," Sharadaa said. "Almost a shame that they could spare only you, Khalid; you are foreign, and Jayadevii's people will hardly trust you. We support the Prince Pravarsena's claim to the kingship. Secondly the new ruler chosen will gain artefacts religious and magical in nature. Zhents of the foulest of necromantic magics have shown interest. Some of these are stored in the temples; some of these have already been brought to the king in the hopes they will improve his health. Particularly of importance is a stone called _Waal-Baqi_: the Everlasting by name, and bound in death magic in some way we have yet to discover. There are disturbing rumours that more than Zhents seek it out. It must not fall into Zhentish or other hands. This is where we may need an additional swordsman. Do you understand?"

"Quite well," Khalid said, trying as best he could to imitate her accent. The child stirred again, slowly waking. "Perhaps now...perhaps now he will tell us where he comes from."

The boy opened green eyes and rubbed at his face with small plump fists, cleaned; his hands had been coated by black dirt before and the knees of his robes were still as dark. He must have done a good deal of crawling and exploring from his family. He watched Khalid's face solemnly, and then broke out with a wide smile missing a pair of milk-teeth.

"I like you," he said in childish Skrtavak. "I like you! What is the pin? What is the funny scarf below your neck? Why do you have elf ears? Are you an elf mage? Can I play with your pin? Why is your nose that funny shape? Is that a sword? Why don't your walls have things on them? Why don't you have rings? Can I play with the little woman?" Flores scowled and swore under her breath. Khalid could not stem the flood of questions or begin their answering; _even a child can speak better than you—_ He tried to gently pat the brown curls, nigh the colour of Jaheira's hair; if... "Is the big man your friend? Who is the lady with the mask like the moon? Do you have books? I can read books! How many books do you have?"

The child lost interest in Khalid's Harper pin and slid out of his lap like an eel, replacing Khalid's relief at saving his stars-and-moon too soon with another mission. "_Additional De...Declensions In Astrology And Sibyllants Volume The Fifth_," the child read fluently, and greedily grabbed up for the book in Sharadaa's small library; Khalid rescued it, hoping it would not cause tears, and gently held the boy's arm.

"What is thy n-name, young sir?" Khalid asked in edgewise, using close speech. "P-please...it _is_ important. My name is Khalid." The child turned back alert green eyes to him, motions fast as if his heart beat a hundred times an instant.

"_You_! And _Boy_, and _Son_, when I've been good and done all my spelling. Those are my three names. What's a sibyllant? What's a declension? Why is your name Khalid? That's a funny name. I can read the sacred vidyas and the alchemy tantras, I like the tale of the Prince and all his arrayed army and the war and the pictures of green potions that make people's insides buzz—"

"It is C-Calishite," Khalid said, trying to answer all—as if that were possible. _A child who does not even know he has a name?_ "—Your family, your m-mother..."

_My father chose my name; my mother sung it to me by nights..._

"We m-must know thy family so we may take thee back to them," Khalid said, returning to the close speech. Flores snickered behind him. "P-please?"

"Mother? You have to know my mother," the boy said. "You'd know her _anywhere_. She's the tallest and the kindest and the most beautiful mother and she knows all the magic spells there are and she has long swirly robes like this—" He tried to spin in his own long tunic. "And her hair, up like _this_, and her peacock ring and her lion ring and her flamesong ring and her djinnseye ring—"

Khalid looked up at Sharadaa, who nodded coldly.

"A mageborn noble's child," she said. "At any rate it narrows it down."

"—And there's Amah, and Pakana-the-cook, and Gardener, and Face-In-The-Glass-Bookshelf, and Walking-The-Walls, and the Bridle People. If you saw Face-In-The-Glass-Bookshelf he'd be different for you, because the people you can only see with the corner of your eyes are different for everyone."

The child twisted around to go back to Sharadaa's books, before Khalid could stop him.

"_Arms Manual. _ _History of the Timurid Line_," the child read clearly, running plump fingers along the back covers and pausing when he came to one in Common. "What's this writing? It's the little round worm writing that Mother knows. I'm going to learn how to read it. What does this one say, Khalid? What does that one say? Why is this book so big and black?"

_Our old friend Gorion—does he find his young one the same—?_

Gorion had adopted a gnomish boy of an age or so; Khalid had seen the rosy-faced child as a helpless infant, rescued from... And from Gorion's writing of that one's youthful mischief it still could not have equalled the tempestuous activity of this child. He asked a tide of more questions; Khalid swung him up in his arms. A wild laugh; an odd child; some might say damaged, but that mattered not; stuttering or wild or strange, each person was valuable beyond measure—

"Swing me again?" the child babbled, grinning gaptoothed—

The Harper hold exploded.

There was no other word for it; grey smoke choked and blinded everywhere; dark-red-sick-crimson flares that brought everything down. Khalid's body jarred. In that first moment he'd hold of the child, shielding him with his own body, the small shape still wriggling under him by the shelter of the half-collapsed wall, the roar in his ears that deafened him. Another shock shuddered through the remains of the house. Past the sea in his ears he could hear Sharadaa shouting; the words made no sense to him; he held the living boy and prayed he could protect—

The buzzing in his ears began to clear. He hunched by the west wall, half destroyed, the bookcase splintered beside it and partly hiding them. The grey dust floated in the air and shapes walked through it. He saw Subhash's magic flare to life in a blue shield; he heard Flores' cry.

A woman too tall to be Sharadaa walked through the dust that remained from the explosion, a long hooded cloak changing her silhouette. Khalid raised his head. In her hands grew the same sickly dark red that had beaten into his brain a moment before; she seemed all black below the flour-like dust, all shadow, or all that threatened life.

"That's my mother!" said the small voice, and the boy wriggled out of his arms and ran to her.

—


	2. Chapter 2

The enemy was dark-haired; unnaturally pale; a long narrow face and plump red lips. Khalid drew his sword.

"That's _not_ my mother!" the child said, puzzled, and a red blast seared the air by him as Khalid flung him away from the invader.

"Selune strike you!" Sharadaa cried, casting; a silver moonbeam came from the air and did the intruder no harm. She raised her hands for another spell.

_She targeted Harpers—_

Behind a fallen chair, in a depression of rubble, protected by a ripped cushion. "S-stay here," Khalid told the child—-Subhash's magic flared against the invader; Sharadaa called a battlecry— "Can you be brave? Can you stay still and—and count to one hundred?"

"Two hundred," the child whispered, "one hundred and ninety-nine, one hundred and ninety-eight..."

"Q-quiet as a swan," Khalid whispered; concealed; near open to the streets; even if they fell here someone must offer to aid a child. He left the shelter and ran to the enemy.

His sword glided over her skin as if she was made of oil. She seized the blade in one bare hand and reversed the force. Khalid fell on his back. He'd given Subhash time for a spell against her and it rippled across her skin to do nothing.

_Cold. She is cold. —Undead, her features—_

Subhash screamed and fell to the ground. His eyes bulged. Sense had fled his face and he screamed in pain and terror; Khalid rushed to him and force-fed him a potion to heal. Sharadaa and Flores rushed the enemy.

Bone snapped and Sharadaa hung from the vampire's hands with her right arm hanging and wrongly bent.

"The stone," the vampire hissed in Common. "Tell me now, Selunite, and spare me trouble—"

Flores flew across to the other destroyed wall. Khalid saw her chest still rise and fall.

"Never if we knew, fiend." Sharadaa spat in the vampire's face and that was enough for the undead beast to throw her aside.

"A coward," the vampire said, gazing at Khalid. The red eyes drew him to her light face, her long narrow-bridged nose and bee-stung lips, ringlets of dark hair curling at the edges of her cheeks. She was more Calishite than he in feature. The Rune were based in that nation. The knowledge came to him. "You would rather force potions down the throat than attack yourself. Come to me."

_She was a vampire—of the Twisted Rune—the name was on the tip of his thick tongue. He could not speak it._

_Shyressa._

He shambled up from Subhash's form, the potion gone to preserve the life of his fellow Harper for at least a few moments longer. He approached the red glowing eyes that called him.

"Dear slave," she said, "tell me who holds the Waal-Baqi."

Khalid stumbled toward her, silent, his throat dry and no words coming though his lips moved. His sword dragged in his right hand, scraping over the ground. Her tongue ran over her lips and fangs. He was close enough to smell her sweet decaying breath.

Then he drew out the seeds Jaheira had given him from a pouch, pressed them against her skin, and flung himself down the moment before their sun's fire erupted.

_Khalid, in case of unnatural undead—_

The vampire screamed. She was a bat; she was a mist; she was going in the wake of the brilliant sun fading. Flores, limping, stalked toward where the blackened fireseeds had fallen, swore, and failed to strike anything.

"—One hundred! Do it again? Do it again?"

—

"There's another safehouse—no—better make it the Low. Subhash can get Sharadaa there," Flores said.

"I would go—I would Selune's punishment on the Rune and all that vampire's breed—but I—" Sharadaa's broken body convulsed. She was expert at fieldwork and knew she should not be sent out; Subhash sat beside her, pale and drained.

"She's high-up Rune. She thinks we got the Waal-Baqi—they don't," Flores said. "Has it been stolen? That leaves the cursed Zhents, or maybe Jayadevii—"

_So we do not either?_ Khalid thought; there were times even Harpers were not trusted with the full secrets, to spare them from interrogation. It would do no good to ask Sharadaa one way or the other, but the next orders showed the truth.

"It belongs to the temple of Saiva," Sharadaa said; Subhash and Flores looked as if that surprised them.

_The Destroyer_, Khalid thought, that was Saiva's name in countries beyond Durpar; called a death god. That drew to mind Bane of the Zhentarim, Myrkul of the dead and of necromancers who gazed into what they should not, Bhaal the murderer's patron. But that was wrong: Saiva was Changer as well as Destroyer, and his followers judged undead and returned their souls to the afterlife. For an artefact that controlled death magic to be associated with the name, and worse, used by the likes of the Twisted Rune—a crisis of faith, one that could shake Durpar worse than any struggle over rulers—

"You understand," she said to him, sounding surprised.

"What does it look like?" Flores said, scowling. "That's one thing I've never heard."

"A magical object. Capable of transmutation," Subhash said. "The magery would give it away." He sniffed the air.

"If there's magic, there's pretty colours!" the child burst out. They had paid attention to the Harper mission instead of to him; it was no place at all for the young. At least he seemed to understand not the danger of it. "So many of them, 'specially the mage who wasn't my mother. I see emerald, rubyfruit, tangilim, orange, blacktaste, chiorescent—" So few of those were real colours, and Khalid worried for him. "Here are the threads out the door where she went!"

Subhash looked down at the boy. "Mageborn indeed," he said slowly. "Child, how far can you trace the direction?"

The child pointed and babbled; Khalid stared.

"A rare gift," Subhash said. "Take him with you, as far as you can without risk to him; for it seems a habit of picking up unconsidered trifles, Khalid..." The Harper mage shook his head.

"She went _that_ way," the boy said. "Can't you see?"

_And who—and what—is he?_

—

But they had little time to follow the vampire. Srinavath faced an invasion of undead on its streets.

"Have to," Flores muttered, and dashed in against a ghoul. This was the same market-quarter Khalid had wandered first through, the white temple of Saiva the Auspicious Judge to the right—

"Cling to my back," Khalid asked of the boy, looking about and still alight with that mage's vision. "I will keep you safe. Stay close and this coat will protect you..." The surcoat was a blanket protecting the child.

Khalid drew his sword; fastened a small buckler to his arm; and went in to join with a ghast.

"Priest's robes!" Flores said, looking down at the remains of a body already dead. "_High_ Priest's robes. The temple of Saiva. The Everlasting—"

_It transformed these._ He and Flores had saved some people of the city; the undead had returned to true death quickly enough.

_Abominations, Khalid! We must return them to natural death, the instant we are able—_ he remembered Jaheira, both of their first encounter with necromancy at large scale— He scattered some risen ghouls; Flores set them alight with a burning brand. Smoke rose in the air. _It must not spread through the rest of the city, of course._

"Have to ask the temple some pretty searching questions, Khalid," Flores ordered, pulling him along. "No time!"

The boy watched, wide-eyed; it was a hard thing for a child, and worse there had been other young ones amidst the undead attacks. _I lost my birth family, Khalid; but at that age it is easier to forget, easier than were I older; the druids took me in and nature became my true home. It still is..._

_Perhaps in this world there is no place for children. I grow morbid; I am only wearied, Khalid; not all is sign._

"How are you, child? Do you s-see anything you know of your home here? Is all well?" Khalid patted a shoulder wrapped below the blanket-like armour.

"Chiorescent colours, lots of them, pearlenway—can't you see the threads? They'll come together, they have to come together, your sword was flightgold—" The child grinned, his face dirty, taking in everything with those wide green eyes. "They are _vetala_, undead? Pretty colours!"

"No bloody time for this, Khalid—come on!"

The temple to Saiva the Auspicious Judge was greyer close by than the pure white it had looked before and from a distance; and the priests within it were terrified of the foes they faced. Khalid stood with Flores, and together with cold iron they beat a path to the temple's entrance. Skeletons had risen in tatters of clothing, yellow and flaking apart as if they had been buried for centuries in old catacombs. It was a terrible sight, for their wide grins and their clawed hands of bone, reaching, always reaching, and only put down when spines were shattered to fragments and Flores induced cleansing flame upon them through a torch. The child coughed and spluttered at the smoke; _at least here, perhaps, if there can be sanctuary for the innocent—_ Khalid thought, grimly shattering bones that parted easily enough against his cold iron.

Flores grabbed a young priest's blood-flushed arm and forced him to sit up. "What happened?" she demanded, her short sword close to his skin.

"Oh, thank the Judge you've come—saved us—nobody—" he began. "So few of us—too few—the High Priest—"

"What happened?" Flores demanded. Khalid saw cracks and lingering smoke on those white domes; as if rot and death had taken this place from the inside.

The human man bridled, tight-lipped. "A disturbance. The ritual. The High Priest—he was one of those abominations, crawling the city—"

"I think we killed him." Flores flicked down a strip of a once-golden headdress. "Sent him to his proper rest, I mean. Saviours of the city and all that."

"But you haven't." The priest glared. "You haven't found the stone. The _Waal-Baqi_," he said in a low tone. "I was—I saw nothing of what happened. We who live saw nothing of the thief. Restore it—destroy it. In the name of the Creator and Great Destroyer. Or else it will be a hell, a rakshasa's nightmare. The city—faith in Lord Saiva ruined—"

"Then we n-need information of it," Khalid said, trying to shape his tone to calm the young priest, though he never had gift for speech. "And this—this boy—" A chance at last to keep the warm living child next to him safe.

"He's lost," Flores said, casually shaking remains of the dead off her sword. "Wandering the streets 'round here and shouldn't be. Any ideas where he came from?"

The priest shook his head. "None," he said weakly.

"Then, can you...h-help him? Take him..." Khalid said, but then squirming arms and legs escaped him and a force strong as an otyugh's tentacles clung like steel bands to his left leg. The child held on unable to be pried free.

"I want to stay with Khalid! Don't take me here! There are monsters and Khalid's the best at keeping the monsters away! And I can see all the magic— I want to stay with Khalid!" The child's green eyes looked pleadingly up at him, wide as mossy ponds.

"Do you not know what has happened here?" the priest said. "Guttered, shattered—like as not he would be safer with you—"

"Show us," Flores said calmly, and Khalid walked inside the temple of Saiva, still hoping to detach the boy and keep him to safety.

"Only the...only the holiest of us are permitted," the priest said, hurrying them along, walking with other lower-ranked priests through halls that showed many signs of recent battle. The clawed nails of undead had ripped paint and murals in relief from the walls and trails of viscera and blood, old and new, were dragged on the floors in the passings of many running feet. "Usually. It is down here. The sanctum. I was not allowed before. But it was here..." Two great doors of polished kathal timber lay opened and broken on ground deep below the temple.

Khalid and Flores crossed into the site of the ritual. The underground chamber was circular and oddly unadorned; the walls were craggy stone left to irregular natural formations dotted with shadows and blackened with mage's marks, and the single altar in the centre was rubble. He looked down at the floor and saw that a maze of lines led toward the centre, the whole of the room sloping toward the remains of the altar as if poured liquid would rush to pool around it.

_Or poured blood...no._

The child next to him clung silently, arms still wrapped around Khalid's leg. He had not said a word all through the temple and looked wide-eyed up at the dark shapes in the pumice-like rock. Khalid patted the soft curls on his head and laid a hand gently on the boy's shoulders.

"Are you...does this f-frighten?" No reply came. Dark stains marked the ground and some substance was pooled around the altar.

"Stinks of undead in here," Flores said matter-of-factly. "Shyressa?"

"_Was_ s-she here also?" Khalid asked the boy. The child shoved the fingers of his right hand into his mouth and did not speak, but nodded once as if he could see the magery that proved the vampire's presence. "D-do you need to leave?" There was a pause, and then the boy shook his head.

"Lots of stones here," Flores said, examining the ground. "Not all of 'em from the altar. The bloodsucker came, didn't find... What's with these?" She plucked up a handful of stones, black and brown and amber.

"The story of the Waal-Baqi is that Saiva walked through a forest in the time he courted his wife and love. Like flame, like a white bull, Lord Saiva descended the heavens to walk among the bilva plants and set his footsteps upon grass on earth..."

"And the stone," Flores repeated. Khalid saw the same as she on the ground: many different small stones, none of them with signs of being attached to the altar.

"And he walked with the guardian of his son while incarnate, upon the waters where the tiger drank and worshipped, where on the bank were many stones..." The young priest recited the story as if only now was he called on to shorten it for an audience. "Lord Saiva asked, _In which of the stones of the bank is hidden my power_. And his wise follower pointed to the first stone under his own feet.

"Lord Saiva only looked within the heart of the guardian. While his heart was attuned he should see the Waal-Baqi for what it was. And then Lord Saiva spoke that that night he should face a great battle, and were he to perish and be sent to the hells it should be to him to carry the power of the Everlasting: the heart of the Destroyer.

"Ever since only the chosen may find the Waal-Baqi amidst other stones."

Flores had industriously gathered all the nearby stones she could find and was turning them over in her hands. "I can't tell too often what's dweomered and not. Couple of them look like they might. Magekid, any of these powerful? Very powerful?" She had to bend down to show them to the child. She gave another fierce glare at the priest. "_You_ got ideas which one it is, bright boy?"

The priest stumbled over and above her. He looked at the stones carefully and plunged his hands into them. But then he stepped back.

"I am unworthy. I find nothing."

"Are any..." Khalid asked the child. "Take as...as much time as thou need." He caught himself on the familiar pronoun. "If you can h-help, then we w-would thank thee."

The boy took down his fist from his mouth. "Trash," he said, and swept the stones out of Flores' hands with a quick movement. "All trash! No magic in them. I want to go out of here!"

_So—_before _Shyressa it was taken, used—_ Khalid and Flores shared a glance.

_A priest? A sneaking thief? The King himself?_ Khalid thought. _It is supposed to belong to the ruler..._

_There is a dangerous vampire yet unalive in Srinavath..._

Flores darted to the walls and scrambled upward. "Passages up here!" she called back. "Found a tunnel, open, running—" It passed only for one of the shadows in the irregular pumice; but it was hollow and small enough for a halfling. She pushed herself inside. "Knew about this?" she directed to the priest, her voice muffled. He shook his head and looked genuinely shocked.

"It'll hurt her!" the child cried out. "The rocks will fall and she'll hurt—Khalid, stop her! Stop her!"

"Blocked in here," Flores called back. "Damned unstable! Fit for my size...mage's peephole? Doubt anyone bigger than me could get through it, it's tight even now."

"C-come out," Khalid asked her.

"Oh, it's blocked all right..." She could be heard scrambling still in it. "Coming." She groaned on her way out, face blackened by layers of dust. Behind her it sounded as if the stone shifted once more. "Hand over a map of the surrounding estates. We'll weed out our spy." She wiped her hands over her trousers, streaking them with black dirt.

Some of this land was garden land, grown over with green grasses, wide walnut trees and pale cotton flowers spotting the ground. Flores traced the lines of the earth, speaking of tunnels and buried pipes for water to wealthy homes; the three of them wandered through paths of a tranquil garden despite the chaos and danger of the city.

"It's _enormagigamous_," the boy said, clinging to Khalid's hand. "I like this part of the city. I like seeing far. I could have adventures like the stories say, and be a wizard travelling all over the world and learning new spells and fighting bad monsters like you, Khalid. Can I be a 'venturer when I grow up, Khalid? And I could make new friends like Flores, little people to travel with me and be my best friend, and go and see everything and find out all the colours in the threads and find the new colours and places— How many places have you been, Khalid? What is the strangest thing you've ever seen?"

_There are so many—_

_Cold eyes of a lich in the dark, Zhentarim swooping on wyvern mounts—_

"The star-nosed mole," Khalid said firmly. "It's a...c-creature with a nose that resembles a starburst...it is a mass of pink tentacles on its face, and it w-wriggles these to touch its food. They are very small," he added. The description would have scared him as a child...

But the boy laughed happily.

"A bursting pink star! That sounds like an adventure. I know pictures of things with tentacles and I can see it in my head, like I can see the old black colours." He looked down at the ground, the grass they slipped past. "Do you have children like me, Khalid?"

_It was natural. Of course it was natural, Khalid. Why then should there be grief?_

"No. We have none," he said.

"Oh. I don't have a father," the boy said—as if he'd heard something in Khalid's tone of voice. "You'll like my mother, though. She's wonderful and beautiful and—"

"Cripes, shut the hells up, kid," Flores said. In the shade of a hill rose the white marble gates of the mansion they'd come seeking. They guarded a garden, thick with almond and crown and sycamore trees growing plane leaves above the barred walls, terraced and mazed with the sound of a flowing fountain. It was tranquil and beautiful, and Khalid wondered if the horrors of the city indeed came from that place. "I don't take brats off on adventures."

"D-don't you...I h-heard you were a married woman?" Khalid said to her. There were no apparent guards posted ahead. They walked between trees that still sheltered them; he looked for gates and ways to investigate.

Flores spat on the ground. "Was. Had a kid with that worthless scoundrel, even."

The child laughed. "Even smaller than you? A little man? Is he here too?"

"No. He fell in with the wrong crowd. Too much like his damn father." Flores tightened her lips, glancing up at Khalid. "If ye ever meet a good-for-nothing hin of the name Montalban Gurman, give him a kick in the teeth from me. Useless man." She picked up a small pebble from the ground and seemingly casually flung it over the wall, watching its trajectory carefully.

"Monty," the boy repeated.

"Yeah. Reckon that's a mage-field," Flores said. "You see it, kid? Round the back." She had them head down shielded by trees, though still close to the mansion. Behind them the temple still rose on the high ground that allowed such a mage's spyhole.

_They must know at the least._

"This one's better," Flores said; a smaller gate at the back, set with a large heavy lock of iron. "Sharadaa gave me a bit of magic. Dead-air the top, lift me up, then come over yourself, Khalid. Lady Muck's got enough defences that it's not like she's not up to something. Stay here and hide, kid, and don't come out unless you can see us alone."

Then impulsively she flung a small red amulet up above the gate, and it dissolved and breathed something into the air that the child watched it—

"_Now_!"

Khalid lifted her, then reached back for the boy while she scrambled over the top—_safer with us than alone, or at least so I pray_—

They ran across the garden, feet scuffing the grass; Khalid saw nothing. Then he heard a man's voice and raised his head.

—_a spell, if I can halt it in time—_

But waves of night came too quickly down, crashing over his head and bringing him, horrified, down into nothing at all. He thought he lifted a hand to plead for mercy for the innocent at the last.

—


	3. Chapter 3

The voice was high and then low, wheeling back and forth like a banshee closer and then further away. "Harpers. Filthy Harpers."

The dirty, ice-cold water brought Khalid back to his body and splitting skull. Metal chained his arms and legs and he could see only a black arching ceiling above. He turned his head frantically to left and right and saw Flores, similarly chained atop a table.

"The...the child," Khalid begged. His mouth was dry. "He is n-none of ours. Lost. I beg you—harm him not—"

"What has become of him is for myself to know," the mage threatened, and openly on his neck a pendant with the black mark of the Zhentarim shone across background of pale amber.

"We'll t-trade...for his safety. Tell us that the boy is safe..."

"This kind of scum'd murder even their own kids," Flores spat. "Tell him nothing, Khalid!"

_She means...have they _dared_? Even the worst of Zhents at times stay their hands—_ In a fit of rage Khalid lifted his hands, his wrists thick, straining the iron bands. He fought with all he could. _I must—I must—please—_

He fell back with bleeding arms. "Please..." he repeated softly.

"A good start," said the Zhent. He disappeared from Khalid's sight for a moment, and did something that involved the clinking of metal. The cellar smelt of burning coals and smoke.

"Who d' you work for?" Flores called out. "Borrowing the estate? You don't look Durparan to me..."

"The Waal-Baqi is my concern. Tell me all about it, Harper." A hot blade glinted cherry-red in the Zhent's right hand. His eyes were small and deepset and blue in the yellow wizard's light; his skin was rough and cragged where he was not covered by dark northern-cut robes. He lowered the blade toward Khalid's tunic. Only thin material lay above his bare skin now. "How did you activate it?"

_I did not._

"He'll activate it on you if you don't back off!" Flores cried out, improvising. "Stupid Zhent fool. Should have kept him out of it, but instead you're half a minute away from dying! Time to let us go before he gets really mad." Her voice sounded a true threat, all a warrior's ruthless fire held in it.

The Zhent turned to her. Khalid moaned, trying to draw him back to himself. The burning blade lowered in the mage's hand. "A bluff," he said triumphantly, above Flores. "A mere bluff. You don't even know how to use your theft."

_Have I? Did I? _Khalid tried to thrust his mind out at something, in a way he'd been told mages did, but he had never had talent for such things; forge his fear for Flores and the child and duty for the Harpers and memories into one and hope that the Zhent would be brought to justice, and nothing at all happened and the chains held above slippery blood—

"You brought this delightful little stone tucked deep in your pockets," the Zhent said to him. "It was an interesting gambit, but futile."

A small egg-shaped object in the Zhent's hand. Khalid saw it, dark and not fully in his sight. _The stone for Jaheira, green-streaked and smooth._

_I found it not far from Saiva's temple. Surely not—the folk tale of the Waal-Baqi is hidden, but that does not mean—not—_

_I would be unworthy of it in any case, for look what I have done to Flores and the child who dared trust me! Look at my Jaheira..._

"I know the legends well as any Durparan," the Zhent said complacently. "This is the source of the magic about you. This is the hidden we have sought about the streets since the moment of the disturbance. Perhaps a touch of pain will remind you of its activation."

He lowered the heated blade. Khalid screamed; other times he had been tormented, other chains, he was a coward at heart and could not face this—

"Very good. Now how did you come by it, Harper?" Fingernails stroked the surface of the opened cut on his chest. _Do not do it to Flores; do not do it above all to the child—_ Flores was swearing at the Zhent, a torrent of Amnish curses that let him think of their meanings in place of anything but this.

_I am a coward I fear I must out of this place—_

"It w-was...a present for my wife," Khalid answered the truth. The Zhent released a spell that stung him across the face.

"And you expect me to believe that? Women crave jewels, dresses, poisons, silk. What fools you Harpers be."

"F-for jewels... For jewels are cold and dead next to her," Khalid said.

He heard Flores making noises as if she was suddenly very sick.

"She is a druid and abhors the unnatural. She would...sweep all of this away; and see it all ended; and quell the unnatural rising of undead..." Khalid stuttered.

"Truly a fool," the Zhent agreed, and once more Khalid was taken by pain. This time it shook his full body, more than only the blade; there was no escape from a thousand white-hot knives digging into his skin and burning him. His body arched on the table; his muscles locked and twitched helplessly; a scream escaped his mouth between his teeth and for all he tried to think the name _Jaheira_ at the last there was nothing but this pain for him.

It stopped and he shook, blinded. His body was a sea of sweat and blood, and he twitched uncontrollably.

"_Leave Khalid alone_," a childish voice said. "Or Face-In-The-Glass-Bookshelf is going to _hurt_ you."

"Young...young master. What is that? How did you pass the wards? This does not concern you; play with your toys like a good boy. I see you have a big one there. Your mother spoils you. Go on and scoot."

"I said _no_!"

Khalid's sight had started to return and he saw a trace of light from an open door and then a blur of something behind the black walls. He heard a dull thud as the Zhent's body fell to the ground. Something hard as glass sawed through his metal chains, reflecting a hundred confusing arrows of dazzling light.

"I didn't tell the truth," the child's voice said. "Face-In-The-Glass-Bookshelf wasn't going to get you. Walking-The-Walls was, because he's _always_ hidden behind you and waiting in the corner of your eye. You're mean when you visit and my mother doesn't like you, Melliam, and you hurt Khalid, so now I'm going to make you never hurt anyone ever, ever again."

There was a thing with glass arms lowering blades over the fallen man. "No!" Khalid shouted, stumbling down. It mercifully stopped in place and the Zhent mage stayed unconscious. He knelt, holding and comforting the child who had come for them.

"Why couldn't I hurt him back, Khalid?"

"Because that would hurt you more than any other. Because that is not right. Because we will take him ourselves to justice and not have to... Not have to do this. You should not have to do this," Khalid stuttered, too quickly. There was a strange dark look behind the boy's green eyes.

Flores, freed, had taken up her sword in one hand, a dagger in the other. "You know what this means," she said, standing above them. "He's Zhentspawn. Vipers breed vipers."

He could see no mercy in her cold face. Khalid shielded the child with his own body, unarmed, and nothing in the boy's face showed knowledge or fright of what she was about to do.

But Flores lowered her blades. "Aww, hells. Couldn't do it to a kid, damn it. I'll get this bastard wrapped in his own chains."

"You are..." Khalid repeated the obvious. "You have a power. You have creatures you have made to walk. I do not know...how? But you must..."

The boy reached into the neck of his layers of robes and drew out an egg-shaped stone that looked as if it had melted into the centre of a copper necklace. "Mother left a mage tunnel open and I went 'sploring," he whispered. "There was magic and then bad things started to happen. Then I was alone and you saved me from those bad boys. It's warm and now I'm home I can start to think of the things I can make alive. Walking-The-Walls, Face-In-The-Glass-Bookshelf, the Bridle People from Down-On-The-Shelves." Behind him, Khalid would swear that he heard shuffling, as if a small army walked down with clink of buckle and smooth soft leather, marching in strange form to come to their master. "Old Gnarly Uncle from Under-The-Hedge outside. Streaming Tiger from Fountain-In-White. Even Spines-Of-Books, into Sage Kasyapa who knew all the secrets and all the spells and Prince Arjuna and all the other tales.

"I can make all my friends come to life now."

"Be c-calm," Khalid asked him. Behind them Flores twisted and popped the Zhent's limbs into an uncomfortable shape and set about securing the man. "Do only...do only what thou need. Be still. Do thou remember more?"

"The vampire lady was frightening," the child whispered after a while. "She was twice. I don't remember it. I don't want to remember it. That's enough."

Khalid tried to stand, slowly, keeping a hand gently on the boy's shoulders. He still shook; his tunic was translucent with sweat. _Weak..._

_But we live and can save._

"Who else's here?" Flores said practically, pushing Khalid's armour and scabbard over to him. "Kid? Waal-Baqi wielder?" She still held her sword drawn and ready. "Anyone else coming to get us?"

"They've all gone," the boy said. "No Cook. No Gardener. No Amah. Only bad Melliam. And the things Mother can make walk, and me too, because I have her blood and magic like her."

"T-that...no, t-that won't be needed," Khalid said hurriedly.

_The Waal-Baqi is found. Its bearer is in terrible danger._

_It rightfully belongs to..._

"Stick it over your shoulders and get on with it!" Flores, with a grunt, flung his surcoat over him. "Make tracks. I know where Sharadaa and Subhash really went."

Khalid looked at her.

"They gave themselves up to the palace to buy us time," she said. "Get moving."

—

_The King lies dying in state; and his children Jayadevii and Lalla and Pravarsena all seek his power._

_Waal-Baqi. Everlasting._

_The rightful place..._

_Around the neck of a child._

Khalid spoke seriously. There must be time to talk of it first. Flores had stepped out for a moment. "D-dost thou want the Waal-Baqi to be returned to its p-proper place?" he said. "It has...it has already hurt you. And b-bad people would hurt you because they wish it. D-do you think that it should be taken to the King? But w-we will protect thou always. What do you t-think?"

"You want me to give the stone to the King or the Princess or one of the Princes," the boy said. "The vampire lady chased you because she wanted it when she couldn't take it the first time. Bad Melliam tried to hurt you. It made me get my friends to come for you and it protected you from the bad dead things in the streets." He spoke clearly, small plump hands about the object melted to his necklace.

"We wish you to be s-safe above all," Khalid said. Dare to place one life above any game of crowns and thrones and all the reason why he was Harper should be betrayed. He placed a hand on the child's warm shoulder and felt the boy relax by the human contact. "There is also...also that the Waal-Baqi is of Saiva, yet it h-hurt many people. Perhaps you w-would have...you w-would have the power to change it."

Flores said nothing, pacing the floor some distance from them with her drawn sword.

The boy blinked, gazing into the many-coloured surface of the Waal-Baqi. To Khalid's eyes the swirls upon it seemed to move when he did not gaze directly at it, but each time he looked he could not identify the precise way in which it formed a different pattern.

"It's pretty," the boy said, his childish smile pearly and gap-toothed, always far more fluent of speech than Khalid. "I'm good at making things alive that weren't. It lets me do more with the threads in the air and see further."

"T-to be of the faith of Saiva...is to w-welcome him as the Changer. Not as the m-monsters thou and I fought today," Khalid said.

"Oh, maybe," the boy said. "Maybe if you want me to, Khalid. What do you want me to do?"

_He is not mine. His mother is undoubtedly a... No doubt she cares for him as much as Jaheira and I would care for..._ Khalid wrenched his mind away from those widening gyres.

"There is a s-story...a c-caliph's daughter was a mage, and she was c-cursed by a djinn to walk around with the t-trunk of an elephant in place of a nose," Khalid said quickly. He saw the boy take heed of the tale. "A w-wandering prince wished to gain knowledge from her, and so he agreed to m-marry her."

"Oh, that's a boring part in the story," the boy said, "but I like the elephant's trunk and the mage. You can go on, Khalid."

"T-then when they were married, the wedding broke the curse in part. At n-night the caliph's daughter showed the prince she had an ordinary nose. Then she said that she could appear without the elephant's n-nose either all in the day, or all in the night, and he should choose which."

"That's not the way real curses work, they aren't broken by weddings," the child said. "Weddings in stories are boring. But the sun hurts all dead things, who roam most at night."

"And t-then the prince found the way to break the curse in full," Khalid said. He saw Flores return out of the corner of his eye, but fixed his mind to speak the story. "For he asked his wife which she w-would want most, and s-so she was free of her curse forever. Because all p-people want to have their own will, and it is right for them to choose that will."

_That is why I am a Harper._

Flores said something that sounded like, "As long as it's Jaheira's will." The boy gave a sharp, quick nod.

"I can't unravel it yet," he said. "Because the vampire lady is still going to come. Her face in the white threads in the air that make your head hurt; you can't stop those from coming. But I want to stay with you. She's a monster and you keep monsters away. And I want you to take me to my mother in the palace. You can look at her picture on the fourth red wall in the tiger corridor. She goes to the palace when she's not here and she talks to Prince Lalla."

Flores cursed under her breath; Khalid took the child's hand to walk out.

_I told the truth to him_, he thought. _But I cannot allow the Zhentarim to harm Durpar._

_Any more than I will allow the demon Shyressa—or any other—to harm the child._

—


	4. Chapter 4

The undead were fewer in the streets. People mourned; soldiers cleared away the dead. Khalid and Flores and the boy passed through the way to the gold-tiled palace of the ruler of Durpar. The boy no longer looked like a noble's child, robes torn and dirty and the amulet of the Waal-Baqi once more concealed in his clothing. A crush of citizens prayed together in an open courtyard, the health of the failing King mixed with pleas against the horror that had come to their city of late.

"We're going to find the servants' entrance," Flores said stoutly. "Always some way to sneak in, especially in chaos like this, and we'll rendezvous with Subhash if'n we can." Khalid envied her confidence, then realised that she must put it on for the sake of the child with them. There were hanging gardens heavy with thick ferns and flowing fountains; Durpar's rich fruit and plentiful gold shining about. Around those giving prayer; into groups dashing back and forth as if they were part of them; slowly creeping past gates and upon protected grounds. Young boys and girls raced with messages; maidservants bore pots of wellwater upon their heads; guards stepped through the gardens and watched over the tumult.

"There are so many people. So much noise," the boy said. "There are other children. I only saw other children from the balcony and the seeing-glass and in books, before. Then there were the ones who hit me and kicked me and yelled. I don't like this. Where's Mother?"

"Keep on b-being brave," Khalid said. "For you have already done much."

"I can bear it. What if I used the stone to make the fountains come alive, the lion head and the leopard head and the elephant mount with flaming mouth of Indra Sakka?" the boy said. "It could—even bring back the dead who are not gone yet, or piece the ashes in air and fire together like black thread, it's the kind of magic in all the threads I can see the best—"

"You n-need not," Khalid said firmly. "Be calm. Come with us." Once more he took up the child in his arms.

_Jaheira, yes, I w-wanted— But never at the c-cost of you, my love— We might have been so v-very happy._ Honey-brown curls rested trusting against his left cheek.

Prisons were set below the palace itself. Beyond bars in the lower cells, prisoners gained but small fragments of the sky from low windows that peeked by half a foot out of the ground. Khalid and Flores stepped past such cells and heard Subhash's cry.

The mage had stood himself up, gripping the bars and earnestly watching the movement of people through the grounds though he was pale and unrecovered. Bending down Khalid could see that Sharadaa lay on a pallet behind him; they were not bound within the cell, and two pallets and a bowl of water and bread lay out as furnishings. Flores had said that Pravarsena would not have the Harpers ill treated, for their past support of him; and Jayadevii would grant Subhash his full rights as a noble by strict law. "So you live! That is good," Subhash said. "They say that the masses of undead have abated—but that leaves them free to lay blame where they would."

"Subhash, we have located the item," Khalid said softly. Those words shocked Sharadaa into stirring and caused Subhash's eyes to pop open.

"Then you must—! Prince Pravarsena must be found. Go quickly. They must not see you here."

"_Fool_," Flores said. "Fool all of us."

Khalid withdrew; tried to look only the servant; Flores turned away with him from the cell.

But it was too late for the guards in saffron head coverings not to find them. Arrows threatened them and Khalid had no choice. They were taken to a hall within the palace itself, and a woman dressed richly in a formal light yellow saree, heavy rings on her fingers and gold on her veil. Her face was tattooed with the marks of the Durparan gods, the harsh long lines of her features similar to pictures Khalid had seen of the King; she was in late middle age, her hair greying below her saffron veil, and her earrings were marked with the signs of the royal house.

"Princess," Flores said, and dropped to one knee. It did not spare them.

"My seer," Jayadevii said in high Skrtavak, and whispered in the ear of a mage next to her. He gave a nod and pointed toward them—and toward the child. She looked back at them. "They are two foreigners, and they have attempted to steal an object that is mine by right. Now they bring it here. Have the child gift the Everlasting to me."

"It is...it is the p-property of only the King," Khalid repeated stubbornly, his teeth chattering in his mouth. "It is for...for your lord father only to judge."

_She is said to be hide-bound traditionalist; too far bound. Pray to Mielikki and all other Harper gods that she is so bound._

"I do not debate law with farangi." There was a disturbance behind; the Princess turned in annoyance at a racing messenger. He spoke to her in a whispered interruption.

_His Highness_, Khalid caught; then _Pravarsena_... Jayadevii conferred once more with her advisors. The boy's hand tugged at his sleeve, and Khalid bent down to listen to him. "They say Prince Pravasena, the youngest, is gone," he whispered. "He is gone and they hold him for ransom. She. _Shyressa_."

Khalid stood awkwardly as soldiers and princess set eyes on them.

"Cloak them all and take them, secured," Jayadevii snapped. She pointed out five of her soldiers. "Go to the point named. The pisacha may have these in place of royal blood."

Khalid started to plead, but Flores' voice rang out louder alongside his: "Kid's no farangi. Leave him here. His mum's some—"

"Bind their mouths," Jayadevii ordered, stone-faced and cragged as a rock lizard. "It is best the Waal-Baqi be borne by another for this. I will repay the family of the boy if he is truly of pure blood. There is no time to waste."

_No—I spoke of this to him_, Khalid thought, panic growing on him. _If we are captured the Waal-Baqi can protect you; use it to wreak enough destruction, stay in the palace and call for your mother to help you—_ He tried to give a signal as the soldiers took him by the arms and forced a thick leather bridle past his lips.

"I can't," the boy said. "I can't because they'd hurt you and the little woman. They're bad and I hope someone tries to take the Everlasting, I hope they reach out and try to grab it and then it will—" They silenced him the same way; Khalid despaired.

_I have failed._

They were marched through streets Khalid could not tell, hoods covering most of their faces, dragged perhaps too quickly for questions to be long-standing. The outskirts of the city, Khalid understood, and then they came to the dry gardens of a dusty old mansion. A shoulder-height fence punctuated by spiked palisades confined yellowed grass, as if this place had seen nothing living for decades. It saw nothing living now.

_Pravarsena kidnapped here. We would...have to rescue him in any case. But not like this._ Khalid watched Flores, who stared coldly before them. He felt the child lean against his leg. He shared a glance with the boy; saw green eyes widen all at once in grave fear, and tried to shape himself into a shield for him. From the other side a second group of cloaked figures approached, one bearing a wrapped spear.

"We see no sentries, Highness," a soldier said. "Nor observer."

Jayadevii raised her head below her dark hood, closely flanked by her honour guard as a score-and-five of soldiers. "Go in. Bring the prisoners first."

A step forward, prodded in the back by a short club, and Khalid saw—and smelled—it all. They had walked into a fog-filled courtyard in only a step, white-blue mists blanking near everything else from sight, unnatural. The surrounding street might as well no longer have existed, the house itself but a far shadow ahead. Behind was the source of the smell. The spikes of the shoulder-height wall were no longer bare. Blood had dripped and dried along them, and on each rested a severed head facing outwards. The back of each was a pointed helmet of a Durparan soldier. The stench was so overwhelming that it could be nothing but real.

_Mage-sight gave one a gift to see past illusions in advance, or a curse._

Then slowly and soundlessly the heads of the dead men turned inward. Bulging dead eyes on greying faces swivelled to stare at them, and dead mouths gaped silently open as if they wished to scream a warning. Dark blood ran afresh down the palings.

"It is not the magic of the vetala that works this," spoke Jayadevii's mage, and Khalid looked down.

"So it is not, Highness," spoke a high cold voice. Shyressa stalked past the fog. "You come in person to spare knowledge that your youngest brother was a fool. This is a greater coup than I could wish for."

"He will never now rule for fear that you have enchanted him," Jayadevii said, "but in the last days of my father it would be unfilial to deprive him of his child." She held out a hand, and a female bodyguard by her side placed the wrapped spear in it. Cloth fell from it, and Khalid saw a _vel_ coloured a rich brassed gold: the spear a man's height with flame-shaped blade atop it, this one all cast from the same metal. "The stone you crave is not the only birthright of our line."

Then divine-like flame lanced down from the heavens. The mist was split in two in its power, dark red, erupting over the eyes like an earthquake over the vampire's head. Khalid had to close his eyes, lifting hands behind his back above the child's—

A man screamed, and the image of Shyressa in the mists was replaced by a middle-aged human on his hands and knees dressed in yellow and white, accompanied by a tall human woman who wore honey-coloured hair in an escaping plait above her neck. Khalid saw the vampire no more—and behind the heads still gaped their silent scream, and under his feet in place of dead grass black smooth stones appeared between shapeless grey ground. Even beyond the gate they had come there was nothing left.

"Lalla!" Jayadevii demanded, striding forward. "What treachery be—the undead witch—"

Even as she strode, the bare shadows that remained about the gate they had come blinked into nothingness. Khalid could not see even shadows—only an indescribable grey that hurt his eyes to search into it. Mist masked this place. Beyond the dead men on the palisades nothing was left. It was another world—

Khalid had heard of such things in magery before. He indicated begging to the guards that they should free their prisoners, for all of them were in strong danger. They paid him no heed.

"Sister. I saw you as her for an instant," the man said, raising himself painfully to his knees. "It sorely tempted me to use certain of my own portion of royal inheritance." He touched a hand to something he wore below his thick embroidered tunic, at his neck. "You would have slain me had you not directed the flame against the unliving, and had I not been protected." The woman in green mage's robes assisted him to his feet, and Lalla gave her a grateful glance. Pravarsena's older brother was a greying man in middle age like their sister, seeming barely younger than her though eight years lay between them. His face was gaunt and the skin below his eyes was dark as if he had not slept in weeks. The long sleeves of his kurta seemed to conceal metal bangles of rank and openly on his belt he wore an odd-looking crystal bell.

And the boy recognised—the look in his face was clear as day—his mother. The female mage too went suddenly pale.

"Fool," Jayadevii snapped back. "You will help me to salvage this situation and you will be silent while doing so."

"Well, it seems that Shyressa contacted us both," Lalla said. "I had thought I was faster than you, sister. My apologies. I would suggest that you walk out of that gate and allow our father to keep one child, or at least send your hostages and your underexperienced guards that way, except that it seems to have ceased to exist. So all glory of defeating Shyressa of the Twisted Rune and reclaiming our disreputable young brother shall be both of ours, it seems. What a mess, that we both were goaded to act according to hopes of proving ourselves."

"I note you bring but one servitor. Pray tell what foolishness you hoped from that," Jayadevii said.

"Pray tell why you underestimate me so. Already three have been lost to mist and death, to join Pravarsena's braves there. Physical force is nothing against this witch. Now have your mage summon anything she may reach for; and Lady Anjanaa will do the same that at least we shall have a distraction.

"Agree that I lead and give me the Makanmani, and your armlets," Jayadevii said. "I may need them."

"I use them. Shyressa will hear our quarrel. I know I tend to over speak but I ask you to hurry, sister," Lalla said.

"I do not rescue you until you acknowledge my right as eldest." Jayadevii rested on her spear. She was foolish—Khalid could smell the dead men's sickly decay; below that might well have been the vampire herself. The witch's maw was all about them and the siblings only quarrelled among themselves—

Then Lalla's mage spoke softly to him, and he answered in a similar tone. Then he addressed his sister, his Skrtavak now more politely modulated.

"Lady Anjanaa has given me pressing reason to follow you, sister, so I shall use my birthrights by your direction. Accept this before the demon swallows us all—and do strike your prisoners free that they may try to save themselves. You surely cannot intend to offer a child for her devouring."

"I did not intend that," Jayadevii said, after a pause. "Stand by me. Have the mages craft constructs. Then the soldiers will advance, the prisoners before them. The demon pisacha must be hiding deep within her lair behind illusions."

"Tell me again who these prisoners are, please," Lalla said. "A Calishite half-elf—a halfling of perhaps Amnian blood. What have they to do with a valleyfolk boy? Are they allies of the vampire, or else? And who casts those heads to stare with such eyes at us?"

The bulging eyes of the severed heads now glowed an unearthly, horrid green. They blinked several times, long and short. _He fights in—in the only way he knows—and I fear. At least his mother is present. A mother must always love her child._ Khalid's bound hands rested on the child's shoulder, and he felt a strange buzzing below his skin that must be something of the Waal-Baqi's casting.

"You would them fed to her as much as I, Lalla, for they are Harpers," Jayadevii said. She gave him no time to be shocked. "You and your mage are not fools and you know what the child is. Now advance. Anjanaa—" For the lady had moved toward her son. "—by me." For another brief moment Anjanaa exchanged words with Prince Lalla; then she obeyed him, moving back at Jayadevii's direction.

The mages raised shadows from the ground and air. Khalid thought he saw a trace of surprise in Anjanaa's face at what her summoning magics wrought: they were not animals as those Jaheira called from glen and under wood, nor imps nor goblins nor kobold, too unformed for these. Black shapes that shifted nigh as ominously as Shyressa herself. The light in the eyes of the heads died down, and they swivelled to their former position and stayed inert on their stakes.

"A wise choice," Jayadevii said. "Now forward—and have a care for your step."

And then in but one tread Khalid saw only mist before and behind him. He heard Flores' muffled cry below her gag and one of the soldiers cursed in Dehlavi. He heard a woman's distant shout. Strange screaming faces flowed white before him, and then he felt brown snakes crawl across arms and face.

He and the child were free. The mists pressed in and they stood on a large smooth black stone.

"Snakes were harder. Something that's been alive's easier, like the heads, or something I know already is alive like Walking-the-Walls. But I can't see my mother any more," Anjanaa's son said.

"Then we will find her." They had taken his sword. This disappearance was in no way natural. Khalid called loudly and heard no answer, even though the others should scarcely be a step away from them among the mists. _Flores..._

The child raised his voice in an odd song, words of a strange way of Skrtavak turning back on themselves. "Stepping on a crack will break the world in two will crack the way the step will world the break inside will step the world in rack and ruin..."

"The m-mist between the stones. That is what causes harm?" Khalid said. _Illusion. There must be illusion._

"They took the world and did not put it back the moment the gate turned and the moment the vetala invited us within her kingdom or is it called a queendom?" the boy said.

"It m-matters more to get out. Take my hand." The disjoint words spoke to Khalid of another plane, a place not the world they lived: magery the likes of he had never seen before.

"I can see her chiorescent threads in the air." The child's hand reached up to join Khalid's. "Don't step in a crack, or her mists will take us back."

One smooth black stone to the next, jumping, and the mists were so thick still that nothing else could be heard. _We should hurry for the other lives may already have ceased—pray that they have not_, Khalid thought; but _caution lest worse happen._ He lifted the boy clearly over the mists between the crack, wondering madly and wildly what his mother had named him at birth.

"_Clear_," the boy said, highly and firmly, stopping to point at a space in the white mists. Khalid saw nothing. "I said, clear! Come to life. You are here. Khalid, it's pretending not to listen to me. It's there. Mother says I have wild fits that only bad boys have but it's there. Strong hands can open a door."

Khalid saw nothing; none of the minor inconsistencies that eye could use to spot unreal spell of illusion. Cautiously he placed a gloved hand over upon the mists and felt nothing.

The boy stamped a foot. "Too slow! Don't pretend to not touch it! A bit down, a bit right. And _push_! The threads make you want to see what they hide! That's...

"That's the door," the child said, and his voice dropped to a whisper.

Elderwood inlaid with gold and lettering of Calishite origin, and now it had swung shut behind them over on the mists. Below their feet were tiles in girih-mosaics painted twoscore dazzling colours, sharp-pointed stars in his birthland's pattern swirling to cut them deep. Khalid leaned back on the vast doors to try to make them open, but they held as if they were iron-barred on the other side. Mage-barred, more like.

"There are too many colours. It makes my head hurt. I want my mother." The child sniffed.

_Then find her_, Khalid told himself. _Fulfil your promise_. Floors could be trapped; behind closed gilt doors monsters could lie in wait. He bent down and pried a single gold tile from the floor. Then he threw it in front of them, waiting for signs of traps.

_If they stop us from going back we must go forth._ He said as much and they stepped toward the first door within.

—


	5. Chapter 5

Khalid saw a garden of strange—to his eyes—beauty. Grasses of many colours were shaped into curlicues like peacocks' tails. Flame-coloured trees rose and shivered in a breeze he could not feel, leaves red and gold like small gemstones. Water constantly sung and flowed in streams through the grounds, tinted red by the colours that seemed to always lie beside it. He tried not to think of it as blood. And the sky was a strange dark blue that looked without limits. It was high summer; it burned with moist heat like unseen fires. He did not lose hold of the small hand in his own.

"Do you see the great eye?" the child said, and pointed onward. Then Khalid saw the sky blink.

A behemoth—in blue with dark blue scales the size of cities—there was no sky—

"Timingila, swallower of whales! It swims between the worlds and eats them whole!"

"It m-might well be an illusion," Khalid said.

"Illusions are silly. Gate-between-worlds—" the boy said a long name in Skrtavak too quickly for Khalid to decipher. "Books and stories! It's like the sagas, where Sage Gargi asks who made this and who made that which made this and then they take her to see where all the worlds in the eternal rivers come from—" The stone around his neck rose upward, hanging in the air seemingly of its own will.

"We must be quiet." Khalid looked away from that vast blue—there was nothing he could do—he searched for a weapon. One of the taller flame-coloured trees seemed to have stronger branches than its fellows; as Jaheira would he said a quick apology to Silvanus below his breath—were that god even present in this strange world, were the trees not some illusion or shapeshifted construct—and twisted down a thick branch with his hands. It gave with a sharp crack. The leaves were unnaturally warm but did not burn to the touch; he stripped away the twigs and tested the balance of the dark red wood.

_Old lessons in the simple staff..._

Something screamed, close to them. And then it charged through the trees.

Khalid saw the white bull, silver chains about its ankles, eyes red and aflame with rage, fire licking its pale flanks, pale horns tall and curved above its head. It howled like something of the Nine Hells. _Illusion_, he hoped in a fragment of thought, and reached for his sword but knew it was gone— He dropped the stick and threw the child up to a high branch of the tree. Then he ran, shouting to distract the monster.

"_—Nandi!_—" he heard the boy's yell. The breath of it was hot behind him. Khalid charged between the fiery trees and knew himself outrun.

He sidestepped the weighty creature before it could turn. It had trampled all in its path where he had only dodged. It did not turn quickly and Khalid grasped a horn with both hands. He could not feel the white-hot pain he had expected. The bull dragged him, flung him back and forth; he tried to direct it this way and that, anywhere away from the tree with the child. His weight meant nothing to it. His grip barely held. The bull tossed him up and down like a leaf blown in a gale.

Then his left hand broke from its hold and flew uselessly through the air. His feet dragged on the ground. Flames burned him against the flesh: the hooves shattered his teeth with every beat. Rolling crimson eyes stared at him like fire from the Nine Hells. He reached—

Then his left hand seized his cloak and flung it over the bull's eyes. The creature bellowed. His left hand clung once more to the horns. The cloak stayed in place—his sweating, singed hands gripped it—the bull's gaze lowered to only the ground in front of him.

The creature sped faster, bellowing its blindness. Khalid held the blindfold fisted in his grip on the animal, still tossed back and forth, waiting for it to plow through tree after tree—it could not help but follow the direction of the man on it—

They came to a thick trunk in deepest red, rising up before Khalid like a speeding chariot would see itself soon doomed. He guided the bull—his hands on them and a small high voice cheering him onward, somewhere behind, far behind now and thankfully to all the gods—

The horns slammed into the trunk and Khalid was flung aside. This time they stuck for a moment. Khalid pulled himself from the ground and flung his arms around the bull's neck, holding the cloak close as a bag over its head. He whispered every gentling word he knew from Jaheira and let the blind bull stamp its feet and try to pull its horns free. The flames crackled across its flanks and the chains upon its ankles clinked like the ringing of bells.

Then the animal silenced itself, still embedded. Khalid tied a rough knot in the cloak and slipped boneless to the ground. He let his breath fly through his chest like escaping martlets. His skin was soaked with sweat and his body was singed and burnt. The unnatural flames continued to bloom on the bull's flanks.

Khalid got to his feet. "D-don't—don't dare to eat that!"

There had been a red-gold apple blooming above; it was half-eaten. Juice ran down the boy's chin. The stone swung easily from its chain around his neck and glinted a bright sapphire blue. Khalid stood below the tree branches and looked up in horror.

"_Nandi_," the boy said, "a sacred bull. That was clever! You did not harm him."

Khalid did not bend to his wounds.

"Put it down n-now! It was not clever to eat that," he scolded. "Unknown food—in a place of magic—is it m-magic to you? There are ways to r-rid poison if it is early yet—"

"It is good magic," the boy said. "The juice is sweet but also like fire. There is only one, though, and I am _very_ hungry."

"Come down. T-take no more of strange fruit. I ought to purge it from..."

This place was not Shyressa's magic; could not be, Khalid knew. The white bull of Durpar struggled. The great blue beyond floated glassily. Trees bloomed as if they were alive rather than undead.

A sound like the scream of a woman rent the air, and then the bull's force split open the tree. The creature fled away blind. Khalid startled; picked up the staff; and stared at the new challenger.

It was a rabbit, long-eared and pawed and four-legged and small, but it was made from living flame. The child was shocked enough to drop his fruit and let the apple roll away from the foot of the tree. Khalid's open scratches burned on his body.

_It cannot be a...a demon. Rakshasa do not come with rabbit feet..._

He stood and stared. Then a change happened that made him grip the staff and start back to protect what he must protect. The rabbit's form changed and shifted—he could see a black band upon its feet—and grew magnificently into a vast winged creature. A colossal phoenix, or a dragon—she became a winged creature on fire, something in it cocking the head as if a mind lived inside it, a guardian in flame...

"If you protect this forest then I beg your forgiveness. If you mean harm to this child you will pass through me," Khalid said—he raised the staff in too-warm hands, knowing what impossibility it was that it could do any good. "Or...or e-else..."

He saw that there was still a black band across the dragon's feet. No mark; but a black cord that grew and strangled the ankles, fiery as they were. It dripped to the earth as if the cords were made of some black liquid, or twinned black snakes dripping a constant poison from their mouths; and on the ground the black liquid steamed.

As he had heard dragons ought to do the creature of flame spoke; spoke like the terrifying scaled red Gorion once faced in battle.

"You speak boldly in defence of the child, Calishite knight." It was in a woman's voice, low and melodious as deep harpstrings played in unison, coated by liquid copper. Khalid could trust no voice alone; not by enchantment; deeds alone were how to know...

And it made him remember, unaccountably, that one voice he longed to hear at last.

"I have borne children," she announced. "My name is Maya."

Perhaps that meant she intended no harm. Perhaps she was bound and a prisoner here as perhaps the bull was—or as the great blue eye that saw.

"Maya," the child spoke. His hands gripped the branches stiffly and his eyes were very wide, Khalid saw, but he spoke as fluidly as always. "Maya, that can mean illusion. You're giant. But if it was illusion I would see you were broken glass really. If it was illusion I'd _have_ to see through it." There was a note of uncertainty in his voice, a tiredness that worried Khalid. Khalid raised his arms to take the boy safely down before he lost his hold. The child stared at the dragon of fire from the bottom of the tree, his head tilted to one side as if he saw a curiosity in a travelling circus. "I want to be tall. If I was high up I'd see you better. Maybe I should have a shoulder ride."

"Can you not see, then, mortals?" the living flame called Maya said. Khalid feared her impatience. He glanced once more at the black upon her feet.

"You are bound and it was by the vampire—the v-vetala—Shyressa," he surmised. Maya shook her vast head.

"The one of this place. It could not be owned by one not of this land," she said, fierce as a summer storm.

"_Rakshasa_," the boy piped up; Khalid stepped in front of him but the fiery dragon seemed to take no offence at the word for a demon.

"Two mortals with more power than they deserve. I swear to you this place is none of the undead by its nature. Free me and I will return to my children, in this place locked between the worlds..."

A small hand tugged on Khalid's sleeve. "It's in the books, Khalid, the ones that aren't all true, Maya, firebirds and fire dragons, she is a friend..."

The great fiery head bent toward them and spoke of a wielder in a gentle voice that promised a blue burn. "Fire is life and joining and joy, little one. Come to me and the cold embrace shall matter no longer. Greet me and I promise you warmth, warmth of my own..."

And Khalid kept a horrified hand on the boy's shoulder, though the child started forward. "He shall not! You burn bright and it is not for us with skin."

But she befogged and charmed and burned with light and it was kinder than the curse of the dark woman. She flickered with flame and her harp's voice would give a form of peace, and her illusions would be gentle. And yet with his wife Khalid knew far more than enough to resist.

"Swear...s-swear you will help us and we w-will free this forest," Khalid asked. It was not a natural place but it was nothing Shyressa nor demon should call home—and the black cords upon her legs troubled him to see, and would trouble him without any enchantment. "Leave the child alone—"

"And you are not my mother! You must not pretend," the boy scolded, and even stamped a foot on the ground as he stared at the strange firebird-dragon who altered her shape. "Where is the death in this place?"

A beading curl of golden smoke bled from Maya and she spoke slowly. "It betrays my master to tell directly. But I turn the world in two. I am nobody and I am you. A gaze makes me anew. Find me; free me; and then what shan't we do?"

Khalid stared at the confused words; he could only stutter. The flames of the firebird melted into themselves, turning to patterns of the trees: she became a flame-leafed deer with long curling horns, then a peahen spreading a fiery tail behind her; a jackrabbit once more, and last a tiny brilliant gold sparrow falling into the branches of the broken tree.

"I turn the world in two," the child repeated, putting his hands together and then apart. "I am nobody—" he spread his hands wide. "And I am you." He pointed to Khalid's face. "A gaze makes me anew." He held his hands to his eyes. "Find me and free me."

"You t-think it a riddle?" Khalid said. All in nature should be free, Jaheira would say were she here, and yet to trust too much in this place was a madness itself.

"Turn the world in two, to be nobody and you, a gaze makes them anew," the boy repeated. "A knife can turn things in two, like a pygmy shrew on a table—twins in a family means there're two of them, Face-In-The-Glass-Bookshelf used to be my Right-Side Twin before I grew too old for that nonsense—"

Khalid smiled at that childishness; for a moment there was nothing but a small boy trying to fill his own shoes.

"And if the world is a dream then a gazer makes a new world each time looking at someone..."

"It's a m-mirror," Khalid said gently, thinking of it. "Of c-course, it was the tale of glass that made me r-realise..."

The boy grinned in understanding of the answer, green eyes opening wide.

"Then the mirror is the way to free the rabbit-dragon just as in the stories! If I find the mirror I can rescue my mother with lots of magic—"

_Indeed_, Khalid thought; any human alliance was fitting above the undead that would be within this strange palace maze. He shivered as if the ground opened under his feet into a toothed black-fleshed maw to swallow everything down.

"Well," he said, taking the child's hand firmly in his own, "we can b-but go on."

To walk through the strange fire forest changed it, but by degrees so imperceptible it was impossible to know when; impossible to know how long it had been. They found themselves walking on a bare plain covered with snow that did not feel cold and felt like pale sand to walk through. Above them was a sky in dark midnight blue, but nonetheless they walked in light that had no source that could be identified. Khalid saw the snow-sand become a waterfall, and then the waters passed down deep to a bottomless pit filled with brightness like a galaxy just-born and a cluster of strange worlds... This palace was a maze of many rooms and the doors to each were not easy to know when opened.

_Other plane. It was never built for humans._ Khalid held the child's hand carefully and watched for moving beings of any sort: harmless or helpful.

"The stone," the boy said, "it knows where there are dead people—like the bad vetala in the streets. Like the evil woman. She is here. Please can we hide from her? Like a game of hide-and-seek—only there wasn't any friend who could play it with me before—"

There was a blue darkness and they walked through smooth quiet grass now. If it was an illusion—and Khalid imagined the blue darkness to be only the closed eye of the vast whale swimming through strange planes—then it was one of peace. But that only distracted from his purpose here. "Yes," he said, "s-show where to hide."

And the air became close and dank and mud-smelling around them.

"Well, it _was_ only an illusion. You can be so silly," the boy whispered. "Magesight shows things true, magesight shows you where _she_ comes from. Where her threads are wrong. She is frightening," he said, his voice a small fragile thread in the dark.

Khalid saw misshapen stone walls closing in about them, filthy with dirt—he was only glad that he did not smell old blood in it. There were tight turns like the ways of a maze that were almost impossible to see once a person was only a few steps away from them. And below the dirt he saw symbols carved into the wall as if they had been torn open by ragged bleeding nails. Either the child could see nothing or he did not understand them. Khalid knew enough—they were an ancient dialect of his homeland tongue and the symbols were for unspeakably foul acts and dreams of ruthless bloodlust. He was grateful he was the only one.

Shyressa's lair of this dark place.

"Follow the chiorescent trails," the boy whispered, "I'm being _brave_—follow the chiorescent trails where she lives and makes bad things happen..."

"Thou are brave more than anyone should ask," Khalid said. The child's grip grew stronger in his hand. There was a faint glow from the stone around his neck, but then that dimmed.

"We can't glow if we're playing hide-and-seek, Khalid," he explained gravely.

A blackened heavy door swung open—low and narrow—into a room with a floor lined with stone-grooved paths, where sharp chunks of masonry seemed to protrude in impossible curves and turns. It was littered with odd furnishings and strange devices: a tall metallic frost-rimed container, cold shivering off it in pale blue fog; curvings of iron that outlined the shape of a cylinder and—Khalid realised and did not say—would need only a spell's activation to serve as a cage; and a shattered mirror clothed by a thin purple veil. It was taller and wider than a man, and the jagged black shapes of the deep cracks in it made him wince by their grotesquerie, though he ought to know they were only a surface.

A mirror. But surely it could not be such an easy answer to the fire dragon's quest. It was smashed already; this the lair of Shyressa of the Twisted Rune; Shyressa the vampire who had appeared only by illusion outside. Khalid knew how to use his eyes and ears and he could hear an approach.

"The c-cold place," he said. A disguise for the heat that a living body gave. They pulled themselves behind to watch and wait, silently, cold alike and closely waiting. There was no sign of any of their companions.

_The wood_, Khalid thought, _will serve as a stake._

Shyressa came. Tall and pale and night-haired, and lips very red. She walked through the doors she owned, stepping high, loose veils slipping behind her body. Khalid barely dared to breathe.

_Watch her back. Watch her back._ The stone around the child's neck moved softly, and the boy kept very still. Shyressa loped with her unnatural gait to face the mirror—her side facing Khalid. There might be better opportunity.

And she took down the veil over her cracked mirror; and spoke to it in a low, steady voice as if she did so each day. The azure and golden lines about the mirror's frame were more Durparan than Calishite in design, if that made a difference to the creature's nature...

"Where are they?"

Then there was a reply. In the slight outer corners of the mirror, difficult to see, Khalid thought that something dark brown and with many limbs shifted. And there ws a low reedy voice that replied, sounding far unlike Shyressa, "O mighty foreign mistress: have you truly lost all in the maze?"

"O lowly partner within this enterprise: do you no longer wish what you were promised?"

"As sunlight harms your flawless complexion so too does effort irritate my soul, my dearest lady of night flowers."

Shyressa flexed backward a long, greyish hand as if about to destroy the object, a light of magery toying between her fingertips—rather ragged fingertips in the faint light. "You are a fool and a coward who hides and cannot see plain facts."

"And to speak of plain facts..." the reedy voice said. "Ought really to look behind..."

Khalid acted before the vampire turned. She saw him run. The staff struck her just below the breastbone; it sent her back, distracted. He followed with all he could. He saw the mirror and the whole room and the lines of some long-limbed creature living inside it, wrapped in brown webbing and cloaks—

Shyressa, inhumanly fast, struck a blow across his chest that left him bleeding and reeling. Her magic called down a black torrent on his head and it left him weak, but he fought because this he had to defeat. Old blood was scattered on her fingers, nails torn and fingers pitted with burn marks still. The vampire's sickly-sweet breath was strong in his face and she recognised him. She hissed at the coward and lashed forward. He felt the bones in his wrist snap and break, and a moment later he hung from her right hand. She prepared to rest her fangs in his neck.

Then they were interrupted and Khalid tried to push her away to stop this nightmare. She'd brought him close and he knew he must stop her with what he had left—

"You shan't hurt Khalid, and because you're dead, the Stone can hurt _you_!" The child stepped out from the hiding-place and raised the Waal-Baqi in a small hand.

And he stepped into a circle of dark red runes suddenly appeared on the floor, surrounding him, Shyressa opening her palm, carefully crafting a trap for what she had known all about all along. The child tried to run forward and ran into an invisible barrier. He fell to the ground, hurt again and seated in the circle with a bewildered, pained look in his eyes.

_Let her have my hand_, Khalid thought, and in that moment she glanced at her successful spell he wrenched himself free.

There was one choice and it was not the obvious one. The strongest fighter was not always the one who won the fight. The corners of your eyes and your sight and ears and places on the edge of your mind...

The magic hurt him, but because he was not the target it could not stop him. Once more he scooped the boy from the ground, with his left arm, and ran. Shyressa would have been much faster but he allowed the fear to speed him on, suppressing the pain for the time being—

And ran straight into the cracked mirror. It let them through like water. Khalid tumbled over hills and felt his mind go black until he fought his way back to the land of the living. It was very quiet.

"The fall. D-did the fall hurt you? Did the magic?" he demanded.

The boy unfolded himself from Khalid's arm and looked up. "It was only a _little_ fall," he said with scorn. Beside and around them Khalid saw countless turns and faint mirrors, broken like shards of a mirror crafted for giants, shadows in them. The ground was featureless and false and smooth as silk and wrong: nothing any would call natural. The colour was half grey and half brown but impossible to describe, a colour that seemed to be no colour at all. He saw nothing of movement. If Shyressa could have followed them in then she would have done it already...

"The bones are the wrong shape in your wrist," the child said. "Can I have a look? The bones are not aligned—that means something." They were alone—this was another's den, the voice from the mirror, the impression of brown fur and many limbs on a cracked surface. Khalid could not stop himself from wincing.

"Oh. That hurts you. That's bad," the boy said, looking puzzled. "Knowing where all the little small bones are _meant_ to go would help. Death and life are in the right way the bones fit together and the way the veins and arteries are sealed into each, and even flame can't burn life because the colours are always in the air." One of those recitals that made him seem older than he was, poking and prodding the break as if he did not know wha he did. "I can make it _blue_!" he said. "Blue means that it's like dead wood and won't hurt you any more, all cold and _like_ it's dead but not really!" Khalid would have sworn he tried to stop the experiment...

He could see the break still but there was no pain left. He touched it gingerly—it did not seem worsened—and took the time to create a rough splint out of his clothing. They stood together.

The angles of this place were wrong: he could not look too long at the corners and the plane was inimical to human life. _Rakshasa. The mirror is rakshasa. Demon. Corpse-eater. A spider who waits for mirrors to deliver flies._

And the strange angles of the mirrored walls left no place to go but onward.

_Mirror-fiends. The name of them is mirror-fiends._

"We will f-find a way out," Khalid consoled. "It is n-not natural for there not to be one." Perhaps it was from a mirror above that they had fallen in—but the ceiling rose away in the same indiscernible colour as the ground.

"Mirrors," said the child, "are only illusions. And illusions are not real.

"I don't like illusions and the magic threads help you see through them," he said, talking too loudly, something to distract from where they were. Khalid did not ask him to be silent, because of the quietness and the feeling that all was dead here bar that which lurked in the centre. Their footsteps left no sound. "Illusion-magic is nothing. But knowing about life and death, that's better. The stone is like going straight to the end of a story and ruining it because you don't want to read the middle bits any more. I want to know about the middle bits when I learn more magic. Death magic—life magic—some of the sacred vidyas say they're part of the same thing in the eternal cycles..."

_It talked to Shyressa. It waits._

The mirrors changed. Subtly at first, fluttering shadows passing by them as if wind lifted curtains and veils, but there was neither wind nor curtains. Nor shadows, not even shed by their own selves.

"We call death magic n-necromancy," Khalid said quietly, using the word in the Common tongue, "and it is often evil. L-like the monsters of the streets." He watched and waited.

"And you keep the monsters away. And the threads in the air—" the child said, as if they walked through some peaceful place unharmed. "It must feel good to unravel..."

And now the large mirrors were all around them. The silvered glass was naked of frame or ornament. The mirrors stood in thick lumps like shrouded figures, as if a monstrous statue-garden surrounded them. Then the sights to frighten them began.

"Look neither to right n-nor left," Khalid said. _The enemy fights with fear and I will stutter through it._

Something must have caught the eye in the glass surfaces— Khalid felt his left hand being tugged.

"That child over there looks nice. We could play together."

"Don't touch!" Khalid called again, but could not help a glance. It was a green field with grasses and flowers that grew far north of here, fed by a blue fountain; another child, dressed in plain homespun like an impossibly young monk, gazing as if both playmates could see each other. The boy raised a hand in friendly greeting, and the other child grinned a pearly white smile, utterly content in innocent childhood. Khalid looked further and saw stone walls below a clouded sky; as if there the season were opposite; and there was another grown figure, coming to the child on the other side. A grey beard and greyer robes and a walk that he knew; that he and Jaheira knew well. He thought he saw Gorion and his child, and then there was another segue for the two of them to talk as perhaps that other child also told what he saw—

Then they were walking along and away from that image, if true it was, of the Candlekeep peace for their old friend.

"That reflection was p-pleasant but others will be less so," Khalid said, for demons might seek to ensorcel first with pleasancy and then with pain—

And to that came black shapes that he himself knew of, though he had never needed to see them closely. Wyverns in jewelled harnesses flew about the black glass towers and they rose through the cold air of the far north, banefire burning in unnatural flames and potent magery crackling at their tips. This was Zhentil Keep, the source of much of the evil Harpers fought and a seat of Bane the tyrant and mortal Manshoon the necromancer, a city where the enslaved and the prisoner had no chance to break free. Caravans bearing prisoners arrived there one by one through a wide road that lead to a black gate, and Khalid looked down at those in their chains and for a moment feared that he would see those he loved best there—

_Jaheira..._

_You cannot be trapped in a reflection or she will never let you hear the end of it!_

The child was Durparan; he did not know what his mother was and only gazed in fascination at the strange vision.

"It looks bad. It's too sharp. I don't want to see it and not in white threads either—" Khalid heard. And the need to protect and the human touch summoned him back.

There running through the rough shades of the mirrors was a dark-haired halfling young man, a heavy cloak over his back and rain soaking him from black clouds above, pelting forward as if he ran for his life. It was the child's turn to be transfixed at the sight as if he saw more to it than Khalid could, and again they fought to travel out of this mad maze.

He wanted for resolve and there his wife's face held him. Ashen and drawn, too ashen and drawn, and he remembered her blood and pain and hands gripping his tightly, too far beyond help in that grove of the olothorn tree and its spiked casings and fallen fruit, all grief and agony and loss that he had caused her.

_It was natural. Of course it was natural, Khalid. Nature heals all in time. Leave me._

_I harmed her and there was too much blood, even after all our battles at each other's side, she in too much pain to finish her prayers._

It was not his suffering; he was its cause; his poor comfort could not help her. It was a selfishness in itself to turn on himself and call himself a selfish fool. He saw her features drawn back into themselves, her heart shielding itself behind a look of iron.

_We battle, Khalid. Perhaps this is our purpose. I do not care to say if we should have had daughter or son. Perhaps this troubled world is no place for children and nature tells me so. Oh never mind; I am not saying all is sign, Khalid. But I have answered your question and it is done._

There were joys and there was sorrow, living in the small house in the forest to hope for their child. The mirrors showed the past that held him.

_There was blood on the grasses and an unformed..._

_Sorrow can never be buried but there are others to comfort. I will return. I promise it to you._

And he drew back from the false reflection of his wife and comforted someone living and warm.

"Skin masks and white birds in the night, skin masks and white birds in the night! Never go near, you must never go near! He is cold and all cold and empty and where frost grows on his footsteps it spreads to each and every plane! They feel his cold and they see him not! They feel his touch and they see him not!"

"Only a dream; 'tis only a dream; only the feeling is real and not the sight. Hide your eyes and it shall come right; it must come right in the end. There are no skin masks here. I promise to stay away from skin masks...unless there is someone to protect."

Small fists beat on his back. "And a grey place, a grey place where they take your magic from you, where everything is grey. And the glass tower and the hungry black mask, the black mask that stops the hands reaching for you! Make them all stop, make them all stop!"

And Khalid came face-to-face with himself: himself silent; laden with knives and a torturer's tools; a brand of Bhaal across his chest; a gleeful torturer spattered in blood and caring nothing for people. And a child, not very much older, turned inward in a small prison with eyes like dull green pebbles, turned in on himself and with nothing of the world explored in him. The torturer drew a sword and advanced in deadly fashion. This, if for being a fool he deserved no care, and so turned against others like a rabid dog biting for pleasure.

And this: was the worst that the mirror could show. So Khalid walked past the reflection and took the weapon from his hands. Lurking behind was the spirit of the mirror, and shorn of reflection he was a tiny imp.

Behold yourselves; behold your permutations; behold my maze and die. Behold your nightmares, including those you shall not admit to yourselves. Behold my terror.

And for a moment the mirror fiend was a towering spiderlike creature with a great number of columned legs and harsh brown fur and snapping teeth, between many grey dangerous shapes.

And: "_Illusion_," Khalid heard the magechild say in sudden triumph, and the creature's true self was a small candleflame to extinguish when they were close. He bent forward and found it simple.

"Oh. I wanted it to make more 'splosions," he heard, and walls and mirrors melted around them.

Shyressa lay on the ground. They had passed through a moment of disorientation; so had she. Rumbles echoed through the floor and it felt as if an earthquake shook them; perhaps it did since the maze was of the rakshasa's working and of course it fell apart. They were no longer in a shaped lair but in a dusty stone room with windows that looked like part of an abandoned great house, Shyressa's furnishings tangled and diminished with water spilt on the floor. Shyressa rose, and Khalid tried to hold her back with left hand—

The Waal-Baqi activated itself by the boy pointing a finger. Shyressa batted Khalid aside—the floor hit head and shoulders—and began her own spells.

"Give me the Stone or I will eat your mother."

"You haven't got her and you can't get her!" the child said, and the magic of the Waal-Baqi began to take the vampire apart.

"Give it to me or I will eat him!"

"You're not allowed to hurt him!"

"As if you dare to claim victory, child, as if you understand power—"

Khalid reached for the staff, and the spell of the Everlasting opened Shyressa's back enough to use it as a spear—

He saw colours himself then, red and purple and blue and black, stripping out in waves as if the vampire was changed to her component atoms. Colours of her own came toward the boy's necklace and for a moment there was nothing but the exploding lights.

She was immolated—turned aside, vanished; Khalid felt himself collapse to his knees since it was done. The boy rushed to him.

"She's gone into all the planes—I made the magic not eat all of her like you didn't want me to do with bad Melliam! That was what you wanted, wasn't it? I did the clever thing like the stories? And look, look what she did to the Stone in her last spell—it changed things, it changed things so that it's unravelled and everyone decide what's their own will, it's all right—" He held up a twisted mass of plain inert metal on the end of the necklace.

"Y-yes," Khalid said weakly, "thou hast done well indeed."

He would not put it beyond Shyressa of the Rune to return from the planes; but that would be beyond the time she could hope to gain Durpar's magic.

"—and there were _nice_ mirrors as well as _bad_ mirrors, like that other child that you knew too who nearly came out to play, and the little halfling boy in the cloak having adventures, and the colours of all the planes of Durpar and all the worlds, and the firedragon with feet like rabbits..."

_The giant firebird who strongly expects her freedom_, Khalid thought; and wondered...

She landed as a smaller dragonish flamebird on a windowsill, then grew to halfway fill the room. Outside, Khalid saw, it was a star-jewelled midnight—as it should not be—and the stars were in no configuration he knew. And a princess and two princes burst in through either doorway.

—

"It's you again," Maya spoke like a flame hissing through molten copper. "I only come to offer my returns. I would not do that, dear," she said. The Princess Jayadevii had used the long spear she held to strike fire down on Maya's head; but the firebird easily took that into her body.

"Use the Makanmani upon this creature," Jayadevii ordered, staring thunderously at her brother. She had fought; it showed by smoke-marks over her saree and her veil disarranged. Some of her guards remained around her.

"If that is your choice then it shows how you would respond to anything you cannot contain in your reign, older sister..." Prince Lalla, equally battered, fingered the delicate crystal bell in his hands. "But if you wish I could change the minds of all here that any of us were under the thrall of the vetala for even a moment."

"I love a fascinating family squabble," Maya said, "though I would wring the necks of my own Jaritari and Sarita if they behaved anything as you two..."

"Then you belong to the great god of fire," the third child of the King said, and flung his hands wide. Khalid was glad to see Flores by him, alive and well. She had rescued Prince Pravarsena. "Our noble father granted the classic three gifts, my lady—a spear to the eldest, a bell to middle, and a mere jillweed flower to the youngest—" He fingered a light-coloured flower in his rich jacket. "My gift grants me only charm and diplomacy. The help of a good halfling bodyguard being absolutely essential to rescue oneself, of course. Nobody ought to leave home without one." His smile down at Flores was wide and graceful; the child also watched the young prince as if enthralled by his words. His hair was dark and glossy unlike his siblings' greying heads and his face smooth and handsome, showing him barely in the early years of his twenties. He seemed untroubled by his captivity—and by the death of his men on the palings outside...

"Could we tempt you all to stay for a sorbet; or are we rescued from the foul beast who must have held you captive, lady of fire?" Pravarsena drawled as if it was only a play performed. All had different means of accepting battle, Khalid reminded himself.

Maya preened. "You humans can be such flirts. Child, gaze not into the planes too long or madness shall result—" she turned her head to the boy. "And, half-elf, return to your foreign lands."

Her form dimished to sparrow-size, then grasshopper, and from the windowsill she alighted into planes beyond. Perhaps one had to know more of Durparan firebirds to understand it.

Prince Lalla touched the crystal bell in his belt, and then shook his head. The dark circles below his eyes stood prominently out. Khalid had thought to object as best he could to mind-magic.

"It would not work on you, brother and sister. I take it Shyressa of the Twisted Rune is perished from overambition—indeed done with. Name it a stalemate."

His mage walked behind him and held out her hands.

"Mother," the child called, and she replied:

"My little Xzarabdhata."

—


	6. Chapter 6

"You rescue my son. Not without exposing him to Jayadevii. You lose the artefact that seekers and claimants will fight over for long months. May I pour you some wine?" the Lady Anjanaa of Lalla's court—and a mage of the Zhentarim—offered in the richly appointed sitting-room of her home, her son safely by her robes. Like her son she was green-eyed and light brown in complexion; her face was long and angular and her long hair bound in a loose braid.

"No, b-but...t-thank you," Khalid managed. He raised his splinted right hand awkwardly to refuse.

"You are of the past and Prince Lalla is of the future," she said. "He is for trade. He selects that which grants the best for Durpar. The borders will open and our commerce will bear fruit from the highest reaches of barbarian north to Maztica and Chult."

"The offers of the Zhentarim poison those who take them over time," Khalid said.

She raised a hand flowing with a draped silken sleeve. "And who is to calculate that? I am a mage and I know the new ways will come. There are those among us who serve nothing but the international brotherhood of magery; my husband was one such. Is there any who makes advances as well known to others as Manshoon?"

Khalid did not mention the Chosen of Mystra of their own organisation; he was convinced that the goddess intended to work in mysterious ways, but to a mage always wanting to know what was next it was not an excuse. "Manshoon does w-wicked things with his abilities," he said, in as courteous a tone as he could.

"At least he does not conceal them like a snail who does not care to know of a world beyond its shell," the lady said. "I see I shall not convince you of realities; it is immaterial that you be convinced. And do not bother yourself about adults' talk, my son." She laid a hand on his shoulder and the child tried to stop himself from interrupting.

He lost the fight with himself and burst out in another bright round of speech. "I don't want to have to say goodbye! I saw all the colours with you, Khalid, and the mirrors and the stones and the strange houses and the whale-swallowing-words and dragons with funny feet! I don't see why you can't stay here with the little woman and meet Face-In-The-Glass-Bookshelf and Walking-The-Walls properly. There're threads around you, good threads, all brown and green and gold like the eyes inside water-lilies." He went so easily to exuberance; Khalid ruffled the curls on his head.

"Come back. Be quiet," his mother said, and he retreated again to her side. She watched Khalid. "He is defective. You will tell nobody of it—" She looked down at her son, who hung his head and inched closer to her side. "How many times must I tell you, poor moonstruck boy? You are to stay; you are to be quiet when I teach you; you are not to run around like a crazed piglet. This time you will obey me and close your mouth while I speak."

_Defective..._

"Nobody s-should say such things of any child!" Khalid burst out. Memories of his father sprung too quickly to his mind, but he wanted to defend. "It would not matter if he was—and he did much—nobody is defective!"

The mage drew herself to her full height. Her features grew stone cold and her eyes a very light and pale green. "I would not dare to say such things if I were you. A Harper has no place to criticise how I will raise my son..."

The boy drew back and stared at Khalid with a sudden shock and betrayal. "Harper? Harpers murdered my father! They did!"

In the course of their duty they had to kill. Khalid felt the irreparable break of a childish trust. He had slain Zhents and though it would not have been Anjanaa's husband it did not matter. "I am...sorry," was all he could say.

"You may go," Anjanaa said to her son. She bent down and kissed the top of his head, while he did not look at Khalid at all. She straightened and gave her enemy a last frosty look.

"You know nothing," she said, and for that moment seemed tired as Lalla. "My son's mind is touched but he is mageborn by blood. If I were gone or slain then there are those in my own organisation who would think of him as only a toy to use, and break his mind until only his magery remained in service to them. I have enemies within as well as without...and while I live I will protect him." For a moment her eyes stared past Khalid as if she searched for a diviner's vision, but whatever she saw she kept inside herself.

"I m-may be reassigned in the near future," Khalid said.

"Then may your replacement be incompetent," Anjanaa said. "My construct shall see you out."

Khalid was ushered through the rich halls of the lonely mansion by an eyeless summoned form. Again he stepped into the Durparan streets in warm sunlight. Thick flowering trees and green grasses bloomed by this corner of the city, and the golden dome of Saiva's temple still stood in place, marked by living men making repairs. Smells of saffron and new incense filled the air and the shouts of children playing in the streets echoed in his ears. He walked by the same fountain and growing plants as before, hearing games and gossip while many pennants of different colours and devices flew in the city air, and he turned his mind to his home by Jaheira's side.

—

_I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds_ - J. Robert Oppenheimer

_Thou seest Me as Time who Kills, Time who brings all to doom_ - Krishna, Bhagavad-Gita.


End file.
